Lumen raises annual cash flow forecast on AI deals, legacy business weighs on results
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By Harshita Mary Varghese
Nov 5 (Reuters) -Fibre-optic cable provider Lumen Technologies LUMN.N raised its annual free cash flow forecast on Tuesday thanks to AI deals with large cloud companies, even as weakness in its legacy business was a drag on its quarterly results.
Shares of the company were up over 6% in extended trading.
The company has secured deals worth more than $8 billion in total from cloud and tech companies such as Alphabet's GOOGL.O 's Google, Microsoft MSFT.O, Amazon Web Services (AWS) AMZN.O and Meta Platforms META.O for its networking solutions, Chief Financial Officer Chris Stansbury said.
"AI needs data centers and data centers need to be connected and that's what we do," Stansbury told Reuters in an interview.
The clutch of AI deals have helped Lumen capitalize on Big Tech's push to build out data centers that can support apps such as ChatGPT, which requires huge amounts of computing power.
The company's shares have quadrupled this year, after worries about Lumen's high debt load and decline in its business that includes voice, broadband and ethernet services hammered its stock in the last two years.
Lumen's deals with a group of lenders have also given it access to more than $2 billion in fresh capital, while extending its debt maturities to at least 2029.
However, revenue fell nearly 12% to $3.22 billion for the third quarter, in line with expectations, according to LSEG-compiled analysts' estimates.
"We are humble about the weight of the legacy business and the past and we are doing what we can to manage that," Stansbury said, referring to the company's efforts towards growing its digital fiber connectivity solutions.
Lumen now expects annual free cash flow to be between $1.2 billion and $1.4 billion, up from its prior forecast of between $1 billion and $1.2 billion.
It posted an adjusted loss of 13 cents per share in the third quarter, which was wider than expectations of 9 cents.
Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva
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